MICHIGAX STATE POMOLOOICAL SOCIETY. 4G9 



highly colored, and the man flatters himself that he has found 

 a, new and valuable variety of the peach, buys the fruit and 

 carefully carries home the pits to raise like valuable varieties 

 for himself and friends. The early maturity and deep purplish 

 color which is characteristic of diseased fruit, are the very 

 qualities which will make a man, inexperienced in fruit, select 

 these kinds as especially worthy of culture. Or a man finds a 

 tree ripening two or three weeks earlier than usual, and hence 

 concludes he has a valuable variety, and he buds great num- 

 bers of stocks and sends over the country this new extra- 

 early variety. The very symptoms of disease are interpreted 

 as signs of superior excellence ; just as the descriptions of hero- 

 ines in fashionable novels, — transparent skin "where the lily 

 and the rose contend for mastery," the lustrous liquid eye, the 

 pearly teeth, the sylph-like form, — symptoms that necessitate 

 the heroine to early fill a consumptive's grave. 



That the disease is widely spread need not, therefore, excite 

 our surprise. 



The disease has only lately invaded our State, and it lias 

 taken its position in a district where of all others we least 

 needed or desired it, — viz., in the fruit belt along the east shore 

 of Lake Michigan. It was first observed in trees imported 

 from New Jersey. The large number of trees required to 

 stock the peach orchards which have been so rapidly planted 

 m the peach belt, made it difficult to find trees in sufficient 

 abundance near home, and trees have been brought from all 

 quarters without much inquiry as to their physical condition, 

 if only the varieties were such as were sought. 



SYMPTOMS OF THE YELLOWS. 



Downing gives the following as " infallible symptoms '' of 

 the disease. 



*•' 1. The production upon the branches of very slender wiry 

 shoots, a few inches long, and bearing starved diminutive 

 leaves. These shoots are not protruded from the extremities, 

 but from latent buds on the main portions of the stem and 



